Saw an interesting Christmas show on the History channel; learned some things about the American version of Santa. This version was "created by 2 New Yorkers in the late 1800s. The first was the guy who wrote The Night Before Christmas (originally titled differently). In that story he originated many of the ideas such as the naughty nice list, flying on Xmas eve,living at the North Pole,etc. His version was a combination of St. Nicholas, a dutch "Santa" with a similar name, and Oden which was some kind of Norse winter god. His Santa was an elf like santa. The second guy was a famous illustrator who drew the classic Santa version who was large rather than elfish. This illustrator also created the Uncle Sam character as well as the donkey and elephant symbols of the political parties.

Here's my daughter and son opening their "big" gifts on Christmas morning.

First she opens her Les Miz play tickets for Philly, then he opens his 3DS and then she opens her Bieber book with a "special" bookmark. (You can turn it off after that, just the boy opening some games and blowing his nose...wife didn't turn off the camera.)